The
traditional methods of spring farming in North China is a likely
cause of the sandstorms that have plagued Beijing and other
northern parts of the country in recent years, according to a
scientific research program. The new findings suggest that
desertification, a longtime scapegoat for frequent sandstorms in
North China, is not solely to blame. "The dry and vulnerable
topsoil in North China's spring ploughland can be easily picked
up by gales," said Jin Heling, expert with the Institute of
Environment and Engineering in Cold and Arid Regions under the
Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). About 53 percent of China's
land, mainly in the north, is in the drought and semi-drought
areas. "Sandstorms are usually triggered by sudden temperature
changes in springtime, poor vegetation cover and aridity, but
exposed ploughland where abundant soil can be blown away is also
a major cause," said Kang Ling, vice director of the Observatory
of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region in North China.

The intensive land cultivation of furrowing and harrow -
ploughing the land before planting crops - is seen as one of
ancient China's breakthroughs and greatly boosted agricultural
output. Environmentalists, however, point out that large
quantities of topsoil in ploughed farmlands are blown across
North China every spring, the time for annual ploughing.
Researchers with the Division of Earth Science of the CAS based
their study on the diameter of the granules blown high and low
in the recent sandstorms and insist that dust in sandstorms were
mainly from farmlands. The CAS research is backed up by Gao
Huanwen, professor with the China Agricultural University, whose
study shows that sandstorms in Beijing mainly originate from
cultivated lands, dry river basins and degraded sandy pastures
around Beijing, which is less than 250 kilometers from an
encroaching desert. "Generally speaking, desert sands are hard
to 'take off' because the granules are relatively big, but tiny
and light soil granules in ploughed farmlands can be easily
'gone with the wind', " Jin said. The most serious sandstorms of
the year are usually witnessed in March and April - North
China's spring ploughing period. As shown in the past two
months, at least ten major sandstorms hit North China including
Beijing, making it "the worst sandstorm weather in the spring
season for the past decade". The experts suggested that China
may draw lessons from North America's great Dust Bowl in the
1930s when dust storm finally caused millions of farmers to
transform traditional deep-furrowing and intensive cultivation
methods of farming to an advanced "protective farming technique"
in which farmers covered fields in straw to avoid wind erosion.
They also noted that the "protective tilling technique" can
prevent 30 to 68 percent of the soil flying in the air,
sometimes even 90 percent. Since 2000, the Chinese government
has piloted "protective farming technique" programs in more than
200,000 hectares of fields in and around the sand-prone Beijing
and Tianjin municipalities as well as some desert areas in
Northwest China which are regarded sandstorm birthplaces. The
agricultural department of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region
has earmarked 1.27 million yuan (158,750 US dollars) to develop
the pilot program in the region with an area of 1.18 million
square kilometers, about one eighth of China's total. Currently,
about 62,000 rural families with nearly 80,000 hectares of
farmland in the region have signed up for the "protective
farming technique" program. The Ministry of Agriculture released
a guide recently on how to join the innovation project of the
"protective farming technique" to encourage companies and
individuals nationwide to innovate and provide technical support
to the new farming technology. On April 10, Hohhot, capital city
of Inner Mongolia, was blanketed in a yellow mist and plunged
into a choked gloom. State Environmental Protection
Administration statistics show that sandy weather in April 2006
degraded the air quality in half of China's major cities,
affecting around 100 million people. Since the late 1990s, the
Chinese government has invested heavily in the implementation of
the Sandstorm Source Control Project in and around Beijing and
Tianjin municipalities, intensify afforestation and
reforestation efforts, return reclaimed land to forest and
restore degraded pastures by banning grazing, which are all key
national projects to improve the ecological environment.
According to statistics from the State Forestry Administration,
since 1999, China has earmarked 103 billion yuan (12.9 billion
US dollars) to restore degraded pastures by banning grazing and
return reclaimed land to forests.